


Watch My Back

by VKL42



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: (I don't go into detail but the implication is there), Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Skyfall, just general shitty childhoods, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-09 05:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VKL42/pseuds/VKL42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MI6 is infiltrated and overrun by an unknown, outside hostile force. Q and Bond escape, barely, with each other's help. Using what little resources they have, they decide to take their headquarters back. Success looks to be about as likely as these two fools figuring out their feelings for one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I've never posted a fic that's meant to be a multi-chaptered thing. This is pretty exciting! I'm hoping that I'll be able to update pretty regularly, but I know myself and I'm not sure how "regular" regularly might be. In any case, I'm hoping to get to the meat of the story as quickly as possible in the next few chapters. 
> 
> I will add tags and whatnot as I go on with the story and they become relevant. 
> 
> Special shout out to my GF who egged me on in writing this. Hope you like it, babe.

Bond doesn’t like very many people. He’s made it something of a priority not to foster any kind of attachments to anyone. In his line of work, attachments can only cause him pain. Of course, despite his best efforts there are the few people who have made it past all of his barriers, namely M. He wouldn’t go so far as to call them friends, nor would he even really say he would put 100% of his trust in them. 85% maybe. But trusting someone 100% only ever spelled disaster, injury, probably death. Just look at what happened with Vesper. Bond doesn’t think about that often. Can’t, not really. 

When Bond was very young he had a tendency to get attached quickly. He trusted fast and trusted completely. His loyalty was as unwavering as his million watt smile. People always noticed his smile first, the stunning twinkle it alighted in his dazzling blue eyes, the slight dimple that appeared in his cheeks. 

When Bond was not much older, his parents died. 

After that the twinkle in his eyes and the dimple in his cheek seemed to fade. His smile grew solemn, reserved, unforthcoming. He started taking a little longer to get attached to people and things. He trusted slower and much more warily. He guarded his loyalty a little closer now. 

By the time Bond had reached his teenage years he had developed something of a trouble streak. His friends had developed something much more akin to a criminal streak. His friends also didn’t care much for loyalty. No honor among thieves and all that. 

Arson is a terrible thing to have pinned on you. Or, attempted to have pinned on you. Bond spent three nights in a cold, damp jail cell after his friends set the local church ablaze. He left most of his somber smile in that jail cell, right next to the very loud and very drunk sleazebag who’d tried to proposition him from the next cell over. After those three nights, his trust and loyalty weren’t so easy to gain. 

He stuck mostly to himself for most of his teenage years. Sure there were plenty of people he hung out with. He ran in most of the circles, inside of school and outside, but he never let anyone get too close. Keeping people at arm's distance was enough to give himself time to put up his walls should he need to. He adopted an aloof, affected mannerism, one that made him rather attractive to the female population. And the male population. Bond had sex for the first time at 14. When asked he’ll regale the tale of how he popped his cherry with a girl he can’t recall the name of (he could recall. it was Susanna Mayweather. she was brunette and smelled like coffee.). They did it in the bathroom at a party in August. This story was true (apart from his lie about not recalling the girl very much), but it wasn’t the first time he’d had sex. 

Two months before he’d sucked off a boy named Henry in his room. Henry was one of the few people Bond might have called a proper friend. Henry had promptly reciprocated the act. Both of them were over eager, inexperienced, and filled with gentle awkwardness. Afterwards, Bond had drowsed happily, a slightly dimpled smile across his lips and a content relaxedness to his body.

The next day, when they saw each other again, Henry started calling Bond a “dirty fag” and refused to talk to him. 

The rumors about his sexuality stopped pretty soon after he had sex with Susanna. Bond felt rather bad that after that most people saw her as some sort of affirmation of his hyper masculinity. He hated it really. Susanna was nice. She played the Queen Bee part well, but she cared and had a big heart underneath it all. Bond had genuinely liked her. 

By the time he was 17, he had fucked his way through most of the willing student body. 

He enlisted the moment he was eligible. Desperate to get away from home. Desperate to get away from himself. Bond was good. He rose quickly, discovering he truly had a knack for violence and thinking on his feet in situations designed to break people. 

The day before Bond turned 21 he had his very last mission. It was in hostile territory and Bond and his teammate had exactly 24 hours to get in, take out a hideout containing four enemy targets, and get out. All without alerting anyone to their presence. Bond knew they were fucked from the moment they hit the ground. 

Before he had finished stowing his parachute he felt the cold press of the muzzle of a gun against the back of his head. Cold dread sunk through every fibre of his being, then and now (most often times when he woke in a cold sweat in the middle of the night it was to this particular memory). He’d stiffened, every inch of his body going rigid, all except for his eyes which darted around in a frantic panic. The only thought screaming through his brain was to find his partner, Ackerman, try and protect him somehow, see if he was ok, see if they’d caught him too. 

The muzzle of the gun lurched his head forward at the same time as a cold sneer from Ackerman reached his ears. The cold dread in his stomach turned to ice. His body uncoiled with frozen rage. He knew even before turning his head that he would find Ackerman holding the pistol to his head. It seemed that Ackerman valued a payout over Queen, Country, and brethren. Bought out by the organization whose members they had been sent to kill.

Bond was 20 years and 364 days old when he was betrayed by his brother in arms. 

When Bond was 21 years old exactly he was greeted with a rod to his feet and restraints on his wrists. 

At 21 years and 1 day old Bond vowed he’d never get himself into another situation where he’d place his life in his trust for another person. He locked up all the leftover urges from his youth to form attachment, to trust, to dole out his loyalty to another person, swearing to never let them out again. 

( _Vesper_ , his mind would always supply evilly when he thought back on this decision, _What do you call Vesper then?_ ). 

At 21 years and 10 days Bond saw the sun again. 

At 21 years and 11 days he saw England again.

At 21 years and 32 days he had formally requested his discharge from the service. 

By the time Bond turned 23 he’d burned through every vaguely legal source of work for a man of his talents. By 25 he’d burned through a whole lot of illegal sources of work too. 

Bond learned not to like other people. They’d only ever let him down or betrayed him. It was this inalienable fact in Bond’s mind that made him such a good recruit for MI6. 

They found him halfway through an attempted assassination job, he hadn’t been that hard to find, and he’d not left himself with enough options to exit via ( _sloppy_ , he’d been so damn _sloppy_ back then). 

It took M herself six days to convince Bond that MI6 was his best option. (Really he’d made up his mind on about the second day, but he wasn’t about to play easy to get, threatened prison sentence or no). 

The training was hard. Bond had to admit that. In fact, if pressed, he’d even admit to the training being _grueling_. It kicked his ass in any case. But he was determined (more so than most others), pulled himself up inch at a time till he was granted 00 status. MI6 didn’t encourage close connections with other people. They encouraged the opposite really. About the only thing they actively fostered in recruits outside of training was an unquestionable loyalty to Queen and Country. Bond poured all of his latent, repressed loyalty and attachment into his work, into his country. The only person Bond could even come close to thinking of as a friend was M. And even then, friend still wasn’t quite the right word. 

Bond was absolutely set in his ways by the time the new quartermaster, who only ever introduced himself as Q, came into MI6. He was perfectly and utterly content in keeping people at twice his arm’s distance at this point. He absolutely preferred to shut off forming any kind of attachment to people before it even began. The few painful reminders he’d had of why this was the best idea ( _Vesper. M._ ) always jumped startlingly to mind whenever the urge to form attachments arose. 

Which is why it was so absolutely shocking to Bond when he realized after one of their regular, post mission repartees that he had grown attached to the curly haired, cardigan wearing quartermaster. He realized he liked Q. More than that he trusted Q, wholeheartedly. 

James Bond had absolutely no idea what to do with this information.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry it's been awhile, school has been rough. Here's a new chapter, though. I hope you like it! I'm working on the third, but I'm not sure when it'll go up.

“007, you do realize you’ve left your earpiece on,” Q’s voice quipped over the comm still residing in James’ ear. 

As always, he was clipped and succinct and to the point. Familiar, now. In a matter of months Q had managed to become a welcoming, calming presence in Bond’s ear. The lilt of his consonants, the cadence of his vowels, the ounce of sarcasm and dry wit ever present, Bond had come to know it inside and out. 

“So I have,” Bond replied, saying nothing more. 

The line went silent for a few moments, but it wasn’t too difficult to imagine Q’s miniature amused smile, just the quirk of his mouth really. It seemed to follow most of their interactions. 

After a few minutes of silence Q’s voice danced back over the comm line, 

“Cufflink or Button?”

Bond paused, “What?”

Q hummed before elaborating, his words slow and drawn out, as if he’s concentrating very deeply,

“I’m working on a new micro camera.”

Bond waited for further elaboration, but when none was forthcoming he replied with an amused, 

“Yes?”

Q hummed again. A few moments later his attention seemed to return from whatever he was tinkering with a moment ago, 

“I need your opinion on whether a hidden camera would be more useful if it was concealed in a cufflink or a shirt button.”

James, having mostly parsed this already, had already weighed and measured the merits and problems each presented. Q’s clarification only served to confirm his guess. Usually, especially with the increasing frequency of these conversations, he was able to sync up with Q’s thought process pretty easily; but occasionally he made leaps that Bond couldn’t quite keep up with. 

The Quartermaster’s brain was absolutely electric, rapid fire, and it kept James on his toes. It kept him sharp; it made him work harder and push the boundaries of his own thinking, his problem solving. These little off the clock interactions were quickly becoming a well looked forward to part of James’ day or week. Technically they had no reason to talk to each other if Bond wasn’t on a mission or getting briefed for one. But seemingly by accident they had slowly fallen into a routine: Bond leaves his earpiece in, the channel to Q’s ever present earpiece open, and the two of them would find some excuse to strike up an easy conversation. 

Usually it was these sorts of questions, improvements on equipment, ideas for new gadgets, that Q would pose. Sometimes James would ask Q to explain more of the intricacies of the latest weapon or watch that Q branch had issued for the 00 agents. 

Bond’s heart had started supplying a tiny little flutter of anticipation every time he put his earwig in now. He tried not to notice it.

( _Careful, James_ his brain always supplied when he thought about this fact too much, too deeply _Don’t get attached. You know what happens when you do._ ). 

“Tie pin,” Bond responds, “it’s got the same vantage point that the button would, but is easily left on a side table or dresser should you need to make a quick exit but keep a set of eyes on a target.” He shrugs, despite knowing Q can’t actually see him, “It’s got the advantages of both the button and a cuff link, and none of their disadvantages.”

“Oh, yes. Duh,” Q says over the line, voice soft, half lost once again in his tinkering. Bond could almost hear the gears whirring in Q’s mind, revising mental blueprints in an instant as he took in Bond’s suggestion, “Why didn’t I think of that in the first place. It’s perfect, brilliant really.”

Bond couldn’t quite suppress the smile that flitted over his face. 

The comm line went quiet again. Every now and then a soft hum or shuffling noise came over the line from Q.

“Bond. Actually I’ve.. I’ve been meaning to ask a favour of you,” Q spoke suddenly, pausing. 

“A favour?” Bond asked back, bemused.

“Yes, a favour,” Q chirped back, “I need someone to test out the new rifle I’m working on modifying. I know I can make it better, but I can’t quite figure out what I’m missing, what I’m not getting right.”

The standard MI6 rifle that Q already supplied the agents was, of course, already superb. Bond had never used a finer tuned rifle; he knew exactly how many shots (six) he’d made that he’d never have been able to make on any other rifle. Bond smiled gently, a private thing just for Q (though he’d never let it show if Q was actually present), at his Quartermaster’s ceaseless perfectionism. The rifle didn’t need to be improved, and yet here he was still trying to do just that.

It was nice to know someone genuinely cared about the 00 agents and their safety, their longevity. ( _It’s nice to know someone genuinely cares about **me**_ , Bond’s traitorous mind supplied.)

“And you need me to test it out right now,” Bond asked.

“If you’ve the time.”

“I do.”

“Oh. Alright, I’ll meet you at the rifle firing range.”

Q paused for a moment.

“Thanks. For helping in your spare time, I mean.”

Bond wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He settled on something somewhere between a hum and a grunt of affirmation. Then, after half a beat, added “No problem.”

“All the same,” Q replied, “thanks.”

“I’ll be there in 20,” Bond said before disconnecting the earwig abruptly. 

James quickly gathered his things, repacking his training kit before popping round to Moneypenny’s office to let her know he was going to have to cancel their weekly sparring session. 

He usually quite looked forward to these sessions, often going out of his way to keep their appointment. But Q, Q could ask anything and James would be helpless to refuse. 

He thinks perhaps this should trouble him, that it should give him pause.

Somehow, though, he can’t quite seem to give a fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr at [toosmallortootall](http://toosmallortootall.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! So I know it's been... a really long time... and if you're even still with me for this fic I want to thank you so much. The past year has been less than conducive to me being able to write. But! I finally got to sit down and pull this fic out of the graveyard and into the realm of the living where it belongs. So, I hope you all like this chapter. I want to get the next chapter up soon, I'm planning on doing this sort of alternating thing between back story chapters and present day action chapters, so hopefully it'll work out like I want it to and you all will enjoy it too. 
> 
> Also just fyi to check the tags for warnings and such as I will be adding more of them as the fic goes on!

Q had been born at home, only his mother and her best friend present. He’d only ever really had the two of them growing up, no other family to speak of. His mother had been disowned when her parents had found out about the pregnancy, not wanting the scandal of a grandchild from an unwed mother.

She had been 19 years old and in love. 

She quickly found out that just because she was in love it didn’t mean he would want to stick around. Or want to have anything to do with her or the baby. She tried to convince herself that she hated him for it, but there was always that traitorous part of her that kept loving him. 

She loved her baby though. She loved him so much, and Q grew up always knowing that. His mother loved him. So did Anne Marie, his mother’s best friend. They both loved him. Q loved both of them. 

His mother had a beautiful name. Eva. He loved his mother’s name. He especially loved the way Anne Marie said his mother’s name, soft with long vowels, full of quiet adoration; or maybe it was the way Anne Marie said his mother’s name that made him love it so much in the first place. When he was six years old he told his mother he thought her name was the most beautiful name he’d ever heard. Anne Marie laughed, a twinkle in her eye as she looked at his mother, then told him he was absolutely right.

Anne Marie loved his mother too. Both she and Q, however, could see the heartbreak that still lived in his mother’s eyes. It faded a little bit whenever Anne Marie laughed, though. Q liked making Anne Marie laugh. He liked making his mother laugh too. 

They lived outside a very small village in the middle of England. His mother, Anne Marie, and the local milk delivery boy were the only people he had ever talked to until the age of seven. 

When Q was seven and a half they got new neighbors, and with them Q got a new playmate. June was a darling little girl, soft and quiet in the same way Q was. Anne Marie was thrilled, as was his mother. Eva’s smile was soft and warm whenever Q asked if June could come round and play, or if he could go down the lane to play at June’s. 

Q was homeschooled, Anne Marie taught him his numbers and all about science; they’d go out in the yard together and look at the bugs together. Sometimes June would come with, especially when they’d go out in the evenings to catch the little glowing bugs in the field and to look at the bats that swooped down. His mother taught him piano. She had the most lovely voice, and delicate fingers. Anne Marie always said he took after his mother in this respect. 

Everything was absolutely idyllic. It felt like it would never end, the perfectness of it. (When Q calls up these memories, it still feels endless in its contentment.)

When Q was nine years old he rode his bike down the lane to June’s house. This time she didn’t come running out into the yard like usual, instead only tentatively meeting him at the fence. She told him her papa didn’t want her playing with Q anymore. 

Apparently she’d told her papa about having seen Anne Marie and Eve kissing, through the kitchen window as she and Q had played in the flowerbed. She said that her papa didn’t want her around such a degenerate influence, that he didn’t want her anywhere near that house of sin, or talking to anyone associated with said house. 

She told Q she didn’t understand why her father was so upset, that she didn’t see anything wrong with it. She said she’d told her papa as much but he’d yelled at her, scared her badly, and she didn’t want to make him angry again. Her father had come out the door at that moment and called June back in, spitting horrible things at Q.

Q rode his bike full tilt back home. He cried in Anne Marie’s arms. He missed how pale both she and his mother had gone. He remembers hearing his mother and Anne Marie argue that night, his door left a crack open, the both of them thinking he had fallen asleep already. They never argued, and even this wasn’t so much arguing as it was all hushed whispers and plan making. Plans of leaving, something they couldn’t afford to do, not really. Even at nine Q knew this. He’d always been good with numbers. 

Two days later some local kids threw rocks through their living room window.

Three days after that Q had most of his belonging packed. 

They moved to a tiny apartment in Bedford. It was loud, that’s what Q remembers. They didn’t stay there long, instead moving to an even tinier apartment, and a rougher neighborhood. They moved twice more before Q turned eleven. 

Anne Marie got an administrative job at one of Cambridge’s colleges a month after his eleventh birthday. They moved into an apartment easily twice as big as their last one, and in a neighborhood frequented more by university students than the sounds of fistfights and angry voices. Q hadn’t seen his mother smile this much in the past two years combined. Eva taught piano to a few of the university students as well as a few of the professors’ children. 

Q had long since surpassed what they taught him at school, and what Anna Marie and Eva taught him at home. The university libraries were a blessing, and by twelve he had made himself known as a permanent fixture: the exuberant bespectacled child who would debate university students on philosophy, and occasionally make a first year look like a fool when they inevitably underestimated him. 

Just as Q turned 13 his mother took quite ill. She tried to hide it, but both Anne Marie and Q knew something was wrong. 

Six months before Q turned 14 they had to rush his mother to hospital. 

Three months before he turned 14 he found himself at his mother’s funeral, only Anne Marie and a handful of others at the service. He cried that night. So did Anne Marie. 

The next morning they heard a knock at the door. 

Three weeks after that Q found himself in the hands of child services on his way to a new foster home. He didn’t cry, he didn’t say much of anything actually. He’d cried and screamed himself hoarse hours earlier as they’d taken him from Anne Marie. She’d cried and clung to him and fought for him to stay with her until the very end, but as the man who’d come to collect him had stated, she had no legal claim over him. 

(Q always wondered what would have happened if they’d done things differently. If after that first morning he and Anne Marie had simply left, like they’d done when Q was nine. He wondered if he’d put up just a bit more fight, if he’d held on a bit more tightly to Anne Marie (both literally and metaphorically), perhaps they would have let him stay. He wondered if maybe he and Anne Marie had said something to his mother sooner, confronted her about not being well, that maybe none of it would have happened at all. Q wondered a lot of things about that year, about how differently things might have gone.)

(“How differently things might have gone” became one hell of a drug for Q’s imagination.)

Every trace of his old life simply vanished. By the time he tried running away from his third foster home, a month after he turned 15, Anne Marie was gone. 

Q had managed to get himself from Northampton back to Cambridge one afternoon. He hadn’t really planned it, but the sting of his cheek that day was just a bit too strong, and his heart a little too homesick. When he finally got there sometime into the evening, he found their old apartment empty. 

No one had lived there for at least a few months. 

One of the professors walking home for the evening recognized him, a kindly older gentleman who taught history. In a few brief words all the air was pulled from Q’s lungs; no one had seen Anne Marie in almost a year. Somehow rumors about her and Eve had gotten out and she had lost her job. She couldn’t keep up the rent. She had moved away. She’d never stopped trying to get him back, though, the professor told him in soft words. She went every day to petition to get Q back, or at least be able to see him again. 

Q barely heard any of it. He spent the night wandering the university streets in a daze, finally stopping by the river Cam. He was lucky it had been warm that evening.

By the time Q got back to his foster home two and a half days later, his foster mother had already packed his bags. Saying he was too much work to be worth the government’s paycheck. The running off had been the last straw. 

Q went through six more foster homes before he finally ran away for good at 17. 

He’d become a sullen boy, or at least that’s how most adults in his life described him. They’d long since stopped paying attention to him. Which was how he preferred it. When he was payed attention to it was usually by the hands of someone’s ire. Logically he knew this wasn’t the case for every kid in his situation, but he didn’t much care. 

(He also knew that there certainly were too many kids who _were_ in his situation. And he knew that ultimately no one would give a shit about him, or any of those other kids.)

It was in those years that Q learned computers. He learned them like his life depended on it. And for a while he thought it could. He told himself that, if he couldn’t find Anne Marie in person, maybe he could find a trace of her in another way. He knew about digital trails, credit cards and all other manner of budding digital tech. Q also knew that he could harness it. 

He learned anything and everything. He took computers apart and put them back together, better this time. He learned how to code, he learned how to make technology do exactly what he wanted. He _invented_ , when he ran out of things to learn, technological capabilities to harness, he made new ones. 

He found her when he was 17. 

He hadn’t actually spent a night in his current foster home for going on two weeks, instead skiffing around the city he called home. He packed up his things and slipped off into the night, leaving the stench of alcohol that permeated that house behind. 

No one would notice he was even gone until he had already turned 18 and it became a moot point. 

He went directly to Anne Marie. He saw her exactly once. She was outside an elementary school, ushering out kids who were evidently her students. Q saw the careful way she held herself, how she was a bit thinner, a bit more worn at the edges, as though she were somehow shatterable. 

Q took one look, one long look, at this carefully pieced together Anne Marie, and he turned around and left. 

She had built something here. He saw the ways she still ached, Q wasn’t an idiot. He may not be good at interacting with people, but he had gotten very good at reading them. Q saw the strain in her lines, and he knew he couldn’t upset that. She wasn’t okay, but if Q came to her now he was afraid that she might actually shatter. Or rather, shatter again, as he had no doubt that she had already shattered once. 

Q took one look at himself, saw the boy he’d become, and knew it would break Anne Marie’s heart. 

He was 17 and by now well versed in the cruelties of life. He was 17 and he thought that it was kinder to let Anne Marie keep the past buried. 

(Or maybe it was that Q was 17 and scared. Maybe Q had gotten so used to leaving, to the cruelty, callousness, and indifference of adults, to the cold ache that had taken residence in his chest that he decided it was better to turn around right there. Maybe Q was scared of finding more of that cold ache by crossing that street and trying to rebuild a life. Maybe Q was scared that he _wouldn’t_ find that now familiar ache, and that he wouldn’t know what to do without it.)

(Maybe Q was 17 and way out of his depth, even if he’d never tell himself that.)

Q turned away and took the first train to London. 

MI6 had found him not many years later. James hadn’t been all that wrong about how young Q was. He’d grown his final three inches sometime between recruitment and becoming Quartermaster. 

He’d built something for himself in London. It hadn’t been pretty in the beginning, but now he had a place, a purpose, people to take care of (people who sometimes needed a lot of taking care of). He’d built himself something quiet here, or as quiet as he could manage as Quartermaster for MI6, and that had been enough. 

At least, it had been enough until he’d met one James Bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (p.s. Don't worry! There will be more happy Anne Marie and Eva in this fic! They had so many good and happy years together and you all get to look forward to happy anecdotes in the later chapters.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [toosmallortootall](http://toosmallortootall.tumblr.com)


End file.
